Mark's Pages

March 24, 2004:

Nothing is possible.

I thought for a long time that the key to her character was passivity, that peculiar quality of waiting for the world to come to her which she learned as a child, locked by abusive parents inside a dark closet where there was nothing but patience and fantasy, and the thought that someday something different would happen.

Now I wonder if there isn't also a strong thread of close-mindedness running through her life, where close-mindedness means more than merely the accumulated habits of judgment and prejudice. It's as if she were afraid, not so much of the truth, but of the process of investigation.

All my life I've watched her 1) assume the worst, 2) refuse to find out, and 3) act as though she possessed real knowledge. So that nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever be done, from something as important as fulfilling her lifelong fantasy of homeownership to something as mundane as fitting a computer into her apartment.

In the end I remind myself: these are her choices. She lives the life she selected. What's hard for me to accept is that it's such a fruitless and futile one, at least, when judged by the standards that are meaningful for me.